Indian poet and screenwriter Javed Akhtar has landed himself in hot water after tweeting a suggestion that women victims can “educate” the 18-year-old alleged mastermind behind Bulli Bai — an app where Muslim women were offered for a sale — and forgive her.
The auction list on the application included the names and pictures of multiple Indian Muslim women, including Akhtar’s wife Shabana Azmi, as well as other prominent Muslim women such as Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai.
This isn’t the first time Muslim women have been targeted in this manner — last year, the ‘Sulli Deals’ also sought to auction off Muslim women. According to Al Jazeera, both Bulli and Sulli are derogatory terms associated with Muslim women in local slang. Akhtar’s January 5 tweet urged the women involved or “some of them” to meet the woman “and like kind elders make her understand that why what ever she did was wrong”.
